Friday, May 14, 2010

This all started when my sister, Claire , was visiting on her Spring Break in mid March. It was late and we were talking about life, philosophy, history, everything under the sun. Suddenly the conversation steered towards classic greek tragedy and universal story archetypes. It led to the simple mentioning of the most iconic fantasy of my childhood, Star Wars. Director George Lucas had presented a visual renaissance while using the classic stories of redemption, good and evil.

This created a wild idea for a podcast. Star Wars. Tragedy. traJEDI. Born. Then and there. Sample, mix, and churn a statement on Star Wars and this connection.

As a kid, I remember my father reading Sci-Fi books nightly, bad Sci Fi movies on the SyFy channel every Saturday; I mean, they could be a "space ship" that was a garbage pail with lights hangin the fuck off it and the man was entertained.

But there was something to its inadequacy.The new generation will not know how many movies, although with hokey special effects, were magical because they actually weren't very realistic looking. Before Avatar felt like I could meet one of the characters outside the theatre, it became real in our minds. As a kid, watching the hero Luke Skywalker battle Darth Vader, and hearing the revolting screams of his insanity as it is revealed that the cloaked, masked villain is his father, left me stunned. The camaraderie of the rebels, fighting against an Empire, still my most favorite story line. Internally, I feel that rebellion must become one's pursuit of change, and the novel by Albert Camus, The Rebel,probably is an extension of being a Rebel as a kid. But overall Star Wars was the most exciting story I had ever seen or thought about, no matter how many times I watched the series.

Every toy, shirt, halloween costume, each special limited new edition bought with every new tech format, VHS, DVD, was a treasure to behold. Even now, my love affair with Endor can be witnessed in the Redwoods or out back in the Presido of San Francisco where Lucas's global empire resides next to a statue of Yoda. The AT-AT's from Empire Strikes Back were inspired by the cranes near the Bay Bridge. Star Wars has and will always define my innocence and what the human imagination can strive to become in the minds of humans.

And the Prequels are the loss of innocence. Interesting that as Star Wars itself details the tragedy of love and hate, the media franchise itself follows a similar arc amongst many disgruntled fans.

And this thematic connection between Shakespearean plays such as Hamlet or MacBeth and Return of the Jedi became apparent. I like to work in very loose frameworks, anything goes. One of my favorite authors Kurt Vonnegut did this in one of my favorite novels, Timequake, and it has inspired many changes in my life. That's my Holy Book.

So it is with music.

I love these subjects, and I have tried to intertwine as many pop culture, tongue in cheek, and personal experiences into this arrangement of music than any before I've done. Started with (c)osmicCAMBRIAN, but (t)raJEDI is a step further. The beginning and end are remixes of instrumentals where I lend my own vocal inspirations of those pieces, at the beginning of the podcast it's my geppetto persona, (g)alacticSON over DJ Signify's incredible Five Leaves Left, spitting rhymes as the Millenium Falcon hits light speed, and we end over an epic Red Sparowes track with my Kurtz Oneday persona of before like a zombie from the dead screaming like a banshee bein burned alive like a Jawa in the deserts of Tatooine.

The music of the artists are largely represented by modern artists, music happening now, where the future of tomorrow is like 10 light years. Speaking with pennies in their pockets, art for art's sake, filling niches in the iPods and phones of the masses. Some of my favorites but would be Frightened Rabbit, Yeasayer, White Hinterland, Sole, Son Lux, Kid Cudi, Gorillaz, Sparklehorse, Caribou, oOoOO, Die Antwood, White Rings, Subtle, and Red Sparowes. Those are some of my faves but I try and pick songs that are ear worms. They worm their way into your brain to create many multicolored universes.

Put it in your iPod, spend some time downloading from your phone (sorry it's a big file to give quality of sound! Note: if you want a ZIP file let me know and I'll send ya one), and take off in a TIE Fighter, X-wing, AT-AT, or cruise the desert dunes of Millionyoung's Mien. It's all good.

I keep putting these out because I love trying to make an arrangement that is an experience for all my friends out there living under the hum of a mother culture, a buzz while you rest, it's what i have learned to hear. Window half open, the buzz of the light saber slicing, dicing it's way into my human experience. Music is my life force. For me, this is like going to a store and finding that one antique which speaks from another time. Ben Kinobi in the shadows providing assurances that the Force will guide you and us from the darkest of moments.My darkest moment was in that dark room in a hospice unit and locking eyes with my father with the hallowing screams of sickness making the pages of my book run its ink. The ending of this podcast goes there and takes out the anger, Emperor Palpatine, screams while shooting jolts of electricity through the writhing body of the last Jedi knight in the universe. My voice crackled, it was pitch black, and I was there vocalizing to the heavens that my father's story feels similar to Darth Vader's. The story of redemption, fallibility, humanity. Without my father's sacrifice and bravery, who would I be? Without his example, while witnessing his own worse obsessions leading to some personal ruin, would I have met Karen, would I be working at the grocery store, conjuring up songs, passionately putting myself in the arts as it was my savior when the world was crumbling around me, when the stress of another test or paper, was like grasping for straws on which would lead to a panic attack over the utter powerlessness one feels in these circumstances. It was the tragedy of the American Dream all around me.

And so, I have to thank my sister, Claire, a budding artist herself, for the inspiration and her bravery facing worse than I ever did. She's the rock to me. Remember, sis, see it through. Get to the canvas. What you got?

I have and I now without further ado, present a labor of love representing my feelings on the human experience and its storytellers, music makers.

About Me

Two brothers born into the cosmos and left to make music conveying story and song from the creative depths of their minds.

(g)eppettoGESTAPO is a music project surviving amongst the sweltering ashes of the modern American dream, in a vast multiverse, in the prison of purgatory lost in the sixth dimension of Earth. Metaphors for our present and future.

gG's purpose is simple: to utilize the metaphor of classic story archetypes as to express their interpretation of our dimension and fuse it with electronics, the future, and the occasional, spoken word tomfoolery.

They are simply tales from beyond a galactic fog forged in the subconscious of a collective will and mind.